Freedom is
taken for granted by each and every one of us. A trip to the
supermarket, a visit to the park, buying stamps at the post office or
running out to the ice cream van can be done by anyone until, of course,
there is someone in the house that requires twenty- four hour care. A
fall in the bath may cause death, a drink consumed accidentally may
cause choking and, of course, if the relative is suicidal, they may be
dead while you visit the post office. These practical difficulties
result in the carer becoming prisoner in his or her own home. Freedom is
no more and life becomes a determined effort to survive. Accurate
figures are difficult to obtain due to the hidden nature of caring.
However, it is estimated that Britain has around 5.7 million carers and
that one in six households contains a carer (General Household Survey
1995).
The
numbers of carers providing support for more than 20 or more hours every
week has increased from 1.5 million to 1.7 million since 1990. In
the northwest 17% of adults - the highest proportion in the UK - are
carers.
Recent studies suggest that there are an estimated 51,000 carers under
the age of 18.

My father
was a 50-year-old independent consultant surgeon who was cut down in his
prime by a stroke. A man who helped others without a thought became
totally dependent on his family. Overnight, we became carers and
learned to empower ourselves with the tools of survival. I am a doctor
now, but I remember that at the age of ten I became imprisoned in my own
house. My mother spoke little English at the time hence we both
supported each other. Coping with the day to day care of someone who
had brain damage was very difficult for her. My father coped with the
sense of loss and the psychological impact of being dependant while my
mother had to try as best as she could not to give up hope.

The middle
class area we lived in isolated us further. The ignorance regarding
someone that had a mental health problem and was disabled shone through.
Soon avoidance of my family was the mainstay treatment At school, the
taunts regarding rumours about my father would haunt me. While the
majority of children could have friends and bring them home, I could
not. My secret world was one where my mother and I knew the price of
discrimination by the public. Through my father’s darkened days, we
struggled with incontinence, we hid anything that would harm him
constantly due to his unpredictable behaviour and had to watch over him
twenty-four hours a day. My mother would do the days and I would do the
nights. Sleep happened four hours a day while the other stayed awake. We
struggled with endless washing, ironing and constant care. My father’s
doctors would come, see and leave while complaining about the smell of
urine. In the nights, we heard my father’s cries for help at the
frustration of his predicament. He told us, everyone felt he was “no
use” anymore and we would be better off with him dead. The guilt of
being dependent haunted my father. I often heard my mother's helpless
crying when she thought I was asleep. She was alone in a world where
everyone had shut the door. My family had suddenly ceased to exist in
society.

It was to be
the ten years of our lives where we learned to live with minimal input
from the outside world. My father was deeply conscious of his condition
after being humiliated at the local shop. He had taken three weeks to
build up the courage to face the outside world and a thoughtless person
shattered him for years. That was the last time he went out of our house
alone. From a witty, friendly man who had friends all over the world,
soon there would be no one who wrote, visited or even cared. My father’s
friends had moved on to better things and would poke fun at him calling
him a “failure”. Through my father’s suffering we understood the
wickedness that stemmed from ignorance.